YES!! It has come again, Ash Wednesday. I know that it seems strange to some people, but I love me some Lent. I just am so excited in this season, the fear of doing a practice that might fail completely, the time to reflect on one’s life, the constant look at mortality, the obsession with an impending death: it’s like the high point of a novel.
I have just returned from a midday service at St. John the Divine Cathedral and it was a blessed time.
The sermon: you get the gift of always beginning again. If you do something wrong–you get another chance. Even death can’t stop our ability to try again. Because there is no room for failure. Every morning we need to remember that God loves us and so our blessings have already been granted, it is merely up to us to act on what God has placed upon us to do.
For someone who has been suffering from feelings of rejection this is exactly the sermon I needed to hear. It makes me think that all is not lost on the pursuit of a call to ordained ministry. Whether or not I will be ordained ever or not, doesn’t really matter, but what God is calling me to do, the essence of what God needs me to do, that I have been placed in the world to perform, that is the call to pursue…Now I just have to figure out what that thing is and how I can do what God is calling ordained or not. This is why I have decided that I need to take up the Lenten practice of journaling with unfiltered thoughts what sits in my hard, the dark and ugly as well as the beautiful. Many years ago a Good Friday sermon’s theme was, “what in you must die so that you might be raised on Easter Morning.” I guess this season is a time to figure that question out exactly.
The reading: Isiah 58:1-12
The Lord will guide you continually and satisfy your needs in parched places, and make your bones strong; and you shall be like a watered garden, like a spring of water, whose waters never fail. Your ancient ruins shall be rebuilt; you shall rise up the foundation of many generations; you shall be called the repairer of the breach, the restorer of streets to live in.
Let us pray.
Dear God, grant us the vision of ourselves as watered flourishing gardens already healed, forgiven and renewed so that we may have the courage to do that which you have given us to do.
Amen.
Pursuing Call 
Hey Miss! Happy to hear your considering your call again, and happy to have another entry of your blog to read. Always enjoy them! Ali and I were just talking about “what in you needs to die” yesterday. I don’t think any of us will ever forget that sermon. Maybe your call could bring you back to Burlington? We miss you here!